Moving Holds and Subtle animation

[OwenWelsh]

Hi Don,

I have a question about moving holds and subtle animation. I was researching some Disney films and I found a scene in Robin Hood where I noticed that the artist just took 1 drawing and held it. Then they just drew the jaw shaking on a separate cel I guess. It seems to me that the artist did this because they wanted us to notice the jaw shaking first and then the expression on the eyes. I was wondering if this is a good practice to hold a single drawing or if would have been better to just draw the character's body twice and alternate between the two drawings to keep the character alive? But perhaps alternating between two drawings would cause you to look at the whole character and not directly at the shaking jaw.

Skip to time 5:18 on this youtube clip of Robin Hood. Its the scene of the little rabbit and he is completely still but his lower jaw is shaking to show fear. His dialogue after the shaking jaw is "Oh please don't tell prince John...."
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[segun]

Hi Owen,
"It seems to me that the artist did this because they wanted us to notice the jaw shaking first and then the expression on the eyes."

- You're right.

"I was wondering if this is a good practice to hold a single drawing or if would have been better to just draw the character's body twice and alternate between the two drawings to keep the character alive?"

- I think it all comes down to what you're trying to communicate to the audience. The little Rabbit in the Robin Hood scene is scared but he's not freaking out, he's not cowardly either. In Disney's "The Little Mermaid", Flounder is a little bit of a coward (in my opinion), in the scenes where he is scared, his whole body vibrates; the animator staggers his drawings, Flounder's entire body shakes. It's totally in character for Flounder to move like that.
- Holding a single drawing might be exactly what a scene needs sometimes. For example, the scene in Disney's "Hercules", on Mount Olympus, Hades interrupts baby Hercules' welcome party... the cutaway shot shows us the gods' reactions to Hades, in that whole scene the 3 god characters hold their poses, a blink is added to the little owl to keep the scene alive.
reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM0dpyUJX14
around 5:06
- 3d animators almost always use moving holds, they feel that if they hold the character for a couple of scenes, the characters go dead. You can get away with held cels in 2d animation. Moving holds add life to a scene no doubt, but you'll have to judge whether you need it in your scene based on what you're trying to communicate. The last thing you want is to have your character moving in an unmotivated manner, the audience will not understand what's going on, and will fail to suspend their disbelief.

I hope i have not confused you, I'm curious to see what Don and the other members have to say about this.

cheers!

[jeremyhopkins]

Robin Hood had a lot of held cells and I'm guessing they it was used in this scene for budget reasons - to keep costs down. It communicates but there's a short time where the mouth is quivering and the body and face are animated and I feel that is stronger. I wouldn't rely on line boil alone to keep the character alive though if the nose and some of the cheek lines were slightly animated to match the mouth, tracebacks on the rest of face and body might be ok. It might help with the jarring feeling when drawings switch from held cell to animation and avoid animation that feels independent from the rest of face and body. Though it'd be real easy to over animate and lose the focus of the scene.

[OwenWelsh]

I hope i have not confused you, I'm curious to see what Don and the other members have to say about this.

cheers!


Nope not confused. Thanks for posting that clip of Herc as well that was an interesting idea to use the blink to keep it alive.

-R

[OwenWelsh]

Robin Hood had a lot of held cells and I'm guessing they it was used in this scene for budget reasons - to keep costs down. It communicates but there's a short time where the mouth is quivering and the body and face are animated and I feel that is stronger. I wouldn't rely on line boil alone to keep the character alive though if the nose and some of the cheek lines were slightly animated to match the mouth, tracebacks on the rest of face and body might be ok. It might help with the jarring feeling when drawings switch from held cell to animation and avoid animation that feels independent from the rest of face and body. Though it'd be real easy to over animate and lose the focus of the scene.

Yea that jarring feeling I think is one of the things I felt when I saw it first. I think the effect could have worked if the scene CUT right after the jaw shaking, but it continues on and creates that jarring effect of seeing a held drawing (for the most part) going to full animation.

[Don Bluth]

Maybe I can jump into this conversation... In the era of inked cels, very often one part of the body would continue to animate (like the lower lip on the rabbit) while the balance of the character's body was designated as a "trace back." This simply meant that the inker would trace back the held cel for as many frames as the animator indicated on the X-sheet. This was shown on the animators cleaned-up drawings in the following way: The moving part was in regular pencil and the trace back was always in red pencil. The inker never traced the red pencil part, but instead, inked from a single previously used drawing. This eliminated any possibility of that "held cel" look.
When Xerox became the method of transfering the drawings to cels, the lines were no longer stable but remained rough and sometimes wiggled or created a line boil. If you went to a held cel, the boil would suddenly stop thus making the held cel more obvious. Personally, I prefer the trace back principle; any time you lose the suspension of disbelief, that is not good.
If you want to see a very effective use of a held cel, look at the twitterpated sequence from Bambi. When Thumper is watching the female rabbit, nothing on his face moves, but the illusion of life remains in tack. I have just resigned myself to the fact that animation requires you to draw every frame on 2's. To heck with economics!

[OwenWelsh]

Don, Jeremy maybe you can chime in but what is exactly is a "line boil?" Is it when a line wavers slightly or is it a build of pencil lines in a certain spot making the line look like it has more weight in certain areas?

Also another question. I'm currently doing trace backs on one my scenes for the CGP. However I'm not tracing every 2 frames of the hold. I was planning on just 3 trace backs, then looping that clip (on 2s) for the duration of the hold. What do you guys think?

I've tried looping 2 trace backs (on 2s) for a hold but it appears to merely flicker or waver. With three drawings looped - the flicker is not as apparent.

[jeremyhopkins]

Don, Jeremy maybe you can chime in but what is exactly is a "line boil?" Is it when a line wavers slightly or is it a build of pencil lines in a certain spot making the line look like it has more weight in certain areas?

I found this definition in Eric's book: Line Boil is the slang term for the evident flickering of drawings when a scene is run at full speed, which results when lines and forms have not been drawn carefully enough to follow through from one drawing to the next.
So line boil can be either or both depending how well the character has been drawn.

Also another question. I'm currently doing trace backs on one my scenes for the CGP. However I'm not tracing every 2 frames of the hold. I was planning on just 3 trace backs, then looping that clip (on 2s) for the duration of the hold. What do you guys think?

I've tried looping 2 trace backs (on 2s) for a hold but it appears to merely flicker or waver. With three drawings looped - the flicker is not as apparent.

If its your roughs, you can leave your drawings as partials with a comment to clean up.. who will be you.. to fill in the missing parts later. I think you might be happier with the results if you trace back all the drawings to the extreme. The goal shouldn't be to create a boil..it just happens because nobody is perfect. If you just do 2 or 3 drawings, it'll create a pattern which can be distracting. At least that's what felt when I worked with the Doodlez guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3iYiRmsExc

[OwenWelsh]

Thanks Jeremy for those clarifications.

Partials! I knew that method (laziness) had word for it :-)

And yes I always trace back to the extreme. I learned a while back then if you keep tracing your most recent trace back that the drawing will begin to deteriorate and lose its vitality.

[OwenWelsh]

Don,

Is this the scene in twitterpated you're talking about?

The ear tip, and nose move subtly. It looks like they were drawn on a separate cel. And you're right, inked cels seem to hold up better on holds than xeroxes.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p143/robertow/twitter.jpg

[asifaarchive]

I asked Frank Thomas about moving holds in the xerox era once and he said that he would sometimes have three cleanups made of a held drawing and then expose them randomly.

[Rodney]

I asked Frank Thomas about moving holds in the xerox era once and he said that he would sometimes have three cleanups made of a held drawing and then expose them randomly.

Thanks for sharing that little nugget of gold.
If I've heard that it certainly hadn't sunk in before.

CG can still learn a lot from the 'ol tried and true methods from hand drawn animation. Its not by accident that the 'too perfect' look in CG animation can leave it feeling cold. Dirtying things up, randomizing and blending them in can help objects fit in better even in imaginary worlds.

Perhaps one of the reasons people haven't heard as much about tracebacks is that people think of it as cheating or copying previous work?

Jeremy said:
I think you might be happier with the results if you trace back all the drawings to the extreme.

Yet another great lesson to be learned.